Dallas Cowboys Blog

Jerry Jones: Cowboys LB Sean Lee will wear ‘quite a restrictive cast’

Cowboys inside linebacker Sean Lee wants to be able to practice Wednesday and remains hopeful he can play Sunday against Buffalo.

Lee dislocated his left wrist and suffered a slight fracture on the last play of the first quarter of the Philadelphia game Oct. 30 while trying to tackle quarterback Michael Vick. Lee hasn’t practiced since and didn’t play Sunday against Seattle.

Lee said Monday night that he will visit today with Dr. Daniel Cooper, the Cowboys’ team physician, and Cowboys athletic trainers for further evaluation. Lee said the swelling in his left wrist hasn’t subsided enough for a hard cast to be used. Lee left the Cowboys’ locker room Sunday wearing a black, protective brace on his left wrist and lower arm.

“With Sean Lee, we’ll see how he practices this week and see if he does practice,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said Tuesday morning on his weekly radio show on 105.3 FM. “It’s going to be a club out there, it’s going to be quite a restrictive cast. He’s not going to be able to have fingers available to him on that hand with that cast on there. Ultimately you would hope that it would work toward that and he’d have more flexibility with what he can do with that hand.”

Lee leads the Cowboys in tackles and interceptions. Cowboys defensive coordinator Rob Ryan said Friday that he’s never had a player play with the kind of injury Lee has right now.

“I’ve had guys play with a cast on but never with a wrist,” Ryan said. “It will be interesting.”

Ryan said a linebacker really needs to be able to use both of his hands to be effective shedding blockers in an effort to make a tackle.

“You can’t grab cloth and things like that. Plus, he’s great with his hands. He violently sheds those linemen. He’s one of the best that I’ve ever seen doing it,” Ryan said. “It’s going to hurt him, obviously. He’s going to have to punch them. Now, linemen will be able to grab him more and then, just wrapping up and holding onto tackles will be tougher.”

The Cowboys ruled Lee out of Sunday’s game on Saturday, he said, and he “will know a lot more this week than last week.”

“We’re just going to take a few more looks at it and try to see if I am ready to practice this week,” Lee said Monday night. “We’re still talking to doctors and taking a few more X-Rays and then from there we’ll make a decision.

“This week, hopefully … we will be ready to go. I think the rest is going to help. I think that’s why the doctors wanted me to stay out of this [Seattle] game. Once they feel I am ready to go, I am going to come back into full action. Hopefully that will be sooner rather than later.”